Over in the quiet Machpelah Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, you can find the final resting place of Houdini. Houdini’s headstone (photograph by the author) The collection continues to expand, with recent acquisitions including Houdini’s Escape Coffin from 1907, which he managed to free himself from in 66 minutes after it was banged shut with six inch nails. The museum opened in 2012 and is formed from Dreyer’s private collection of Houdini memorabilia, with hundreds of items from vintage posters to straightjackets to handcuffs, and even the trunk in which he performed his “Metamorphosis” trick. One place that is happy to welcome fans is the small Houdini Museum inside Roger Dreyer’s Fantasma magic shop across from Penn Station on Seventh Avenue. Houdini Museum (via Houdini Museum & Fantasma Magic) However, you can appreciate the home from the street and imagine the escape artist within developing some new impossible escape. While with the little balcony and unchanged façade you can still almost imagine Houdini stepping out from its doorway (on which a historic red plaque rests in honor of his residency), it is still a private home and its current owner reportedly isn’t fond of the flood of visiting fans who arrive on Halloween, the anniversary of Houdini’s death. An oversized bathtub was installed so that he could perfect his underwater escape tricks, and he kept a vast library of books on magic. The neighborhood at the time was mostly Jewish and German, and Houdini settled in by making his house into a place of respite and practice. When Houdini hit it big in 1904, he bought a stately brownstone up in Harlem on 113th Street, where he would live until his 1926 death. Houdini’s home in Harlem (in the center with the small balcony) (via Google Maps) Here are four places in New York City where you can still find the great magician manifested: Yet more than a stage, New York was Houdini’s home.
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